5 menfassung der finanziellen Mittel und der wirtschaftlichen Kräfte aller Landschaften.” State policies of taxation and administration were given theoretical support through a complex of theories known collectively as mercantilism and cameralism. The basic principle of the mercantilist program was that state incomes should be increased as much as possible. Trade and industry, which were considered the only money-producing pursuits, were to be promoted through a policy of state regulation; trade with foreign countries was to be regulated in accordance with the principle of an active balance of trade, which meant that exports were to be increased, while imports were to be held at the lowest possible level with the help of protective tariffs and statutes against the importation of certain goods. The mercantilists placed great emphasis on foreign trade, which, according to their conception of fiscal policy, was the principle source of state revenues. This viewpoint resulted in the complete subordination of fiscal and economic policies to considerations concerning exports, the continuous increase of which was the dominant goal of state fiscal policy. A special theory and technique of state administration evolved in the form of cameralism, which had its roots in several German states where extensive administrative reforms were introduced during the sixteenth century. The term “cameralism” stemmed from the (originally Greek) Latin “camera,” a covered, vaulted room. “Camera” or “Kammer” was the term used to denote the central fiscal administration, the prince’s “chamber. The theoreticians of cameralism, the so-called cameralists, developed principles for a systematic administrative organization and drew up a detailed administrative technique consisting of permanent office routines. Thus, Albion Small could describe cameralism as “the routine of the bureaus in which the administrative employees of governments, first of all in the fiscal departments, did their work; or in a larger sense it was systematized governmental procedure, the application of which was made in the administrative bureaus.” But it is impossible to define cameralism solely within the framework of administrative techniques. It would be more accurate to characterize cameralism as a fiscal and administrative doctrine based on a constitutional theory. The ideal was “der wohlgeordnete Polizei- ” 13 Fritz Hartung, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte vom 13. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (5th ed., Stuttgart, 1950), 103—104. See in addition Johannes Kunisch, Der kleine Krieg. Studien zum Heerwesen des Absolutismus (Wiesbaden, 1973), 1. '•'* Kurt Zielenziger, Die alten deutschen Kameralisten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und zum Problemdes Merkantilismus (Jena, 1914), 85. Albion Small, The Cameralists: The Pioneers of German Social Polity (Chicago, 1909), 18.
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